Smart Monitoring and Advanced Construction Techniques for Bridge Engineering

Bridge engineering plays a critical role in modern transportation networks. However, the growing complexity of bridge structures and service environments has posed significant challenges to their safety, durability, and long-term performance. With the rapid development of digital technologies, smart inspection and monitoring systems—integrating advanced sensors, data fusion, and intelligent algorithms—have become essential tools for real-time structural health assessment, defect detection, and risk prediction. At the same time, innovations in materials science, automation, and construction, including prefabrication, robotic assembly, and digital twin modeling, are reshaping conventional approaches to bridge construction and maintenance. These advances not only improve construction accuracy, quality control, and efficiency, but also enhance structural resilience, operational safety, and sustainability. This Special Issue showcases emerging smart inspection and monitoring technologies, as well as advanced construction methods, that contribute to intelligent, safe, and sustainable bridge engineering.

The rapid expansion of bridge infrastructure, combined with increasingly complex construction and service conditions, has raised urgent concerns about structural integrity, durability, and lifecycle maintenance. Conventional inspection and construction methods often struggle with issues related to accuracy, automation, and adaptability, limiting their ability to ensure long-term reliability and safety. Recent advances in smart sensing, digital twin modeling, artificial intelligence, and robotic construction offer transformative opportunities to overcome these limitations. By integrating smart inspection and monitoring technologies with advanced manufacturing and automated construction approaches, it is possible to achieve real-time data acquisition, intelligent defect diagnosis, and predictive maintenance throughout a bridge’s lifecycle. This Research Topic encourages interdisciplinary research dedicated to developing innovative sensing systems, intelligent monitoring frameworks, and digital construction platforms, with the ultimate goal of improving the precision, efficiency, and sustainability of bridge engineering.

Smart monitoring, detection, and inspection technologies are essential to ensuring structural safety, construction quality, and long-term service performance in bridge engineering. With the growing adoption of large-scale infrastructures—such as long-span, sea-crossing, and prefabricated bridges—along with the critical role of substructures such as pile foundations, construction and operational conditions have become increasingly complex. These developments introduce new challenges in precision control and structural health management across both superstructure and substructure systems. Advances in high-performance materials, intelligent sensor networks, signal processing, digital twins, and artificial intelligence are now driving the development of integrated smart monitoring and inspection systems, alongside more efficient construction and maintenance techniques—applicable to both above-ground and foundation elements.

For this Special Issue, we sincerely invite submissions of articles showcasing cutting-edge research and recent advances in smart inspection, detection, monitoring, and advanced construction technologies for bridge engineering. Contributions may include theoretical analyses, experimental studies, numerical simulations, and comprehensive reviews.

Article types and fees

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• Hypothesis and Theory
• Methods
• Mini Review
• Opinion
• Original Research
• Perspective
• Review

Articles that are accepted for publication by our external editors following rigorous peer review incur a publishing fee charged to Authors, institutions, or funders.

Article types

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• Hypothesis and Theory
• Methods
• Mini Review
• Opinion
• Original Research
• Perspective
• Review

Keywords: Bridge Engineering, Geotechnical Engineering, Monitoring and Detection, Advanced Sensors, Construction Techniques

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.